


From the Days of a Brooklyn Long Reclaimed, Sweep the Shades of What Will Be

by TigressJade



Series: A Shot in the Dark and a Shield Edged With Light [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men (Movies), X-Men Evolution
Genre: And Gets A Visit From Peggy, And Won, And everybody knows about it, Awesome Peggy Carter, BAMF Peggy Carter, Bucky and Steve go off the map a little, Daniel Sousa is a good uncle, Except Riley, F/M, Fix-It, Jack Thompson Meddles, M/M, Mixed X-Men Universes, Multi, Protective Howard Stark, Protective Sam Wilson, Rhodey Is a Good Bro, Rhodey gets concerned, Riley Lives, S.H.I.E.L.D. Changed History, Sam Wilson Feels, Sam's got a crush, So did the Howling Commandos, Thompson ran for Senator, Tony and Pepper Meddle, Until Tony, Yinsen lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 10:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3526424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigressJade/pseuds/TigressJade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tie-in epilogue of "From Sky's Edge at the Horizon to the Streets of Brooklyn That We Call Home" showing the years in between Steve and Bucky's return to Brooklyn and them joining the Avengers in the Battle for New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Days of a Brooklyn Long Reclaimed, Sweep the Shades of What Will Be

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so here's the epilogue I said I'd write. There will be other stories written for this series eventually, that elaborate on different aspects of this universe. Thanks again for your kind and detailed comments. :)
> 
> Special thanks to Furrina for giving me such lovely ideas for where to start and some much valued inspiration. ;)
> 
> Happy Reading!

Residing in Brooklyn didn’t absolve Steve and Bucky from playing centerfield in Howard Stark’s eventual rivalry with his son Anthony “Tony” Stark. In fact Maria Stark was granted the only bi in that game and wisely stayed out of any and all technological competitions between her husband and son in exchange for one dinner per week where they attempted to communicate peaceably.

Bucky isn’t so fortunate, neither is Steve.

“Hey Uncle Iron Grip, I need to see if this thing can hold water against your super arm. Don’t mind if I aim it just so and-”

“Dammit couldn’t you just test this thing against Steve’s shield?” Bucky gritted out as he held fast against the projectile Tony had sent his way.

“No can do, Sergeant Steele, Hawkeye spirited him off to one of his nests an hour ago. Must be some kind of henchmen thing” Tony shouted his reply, adjusting his shades to refocus his view.

Clint Barton a.k.a. Hawkeye was an Olympic level archer who’d been recruited to S.H.I.E.L.D. by Assistant Director Phil Coulson, who Steve had personally recruited two decades earlier from one of the CIA’s operative training programs.

_“Excuse me, would you mind-”_

_“I know you, you’re Captain Rogers.”_

_Steve shuffled awkwardly._

_“This wasn’t the way I wanted to approach you, but Director Bush isn’t a fan of his recruits being scouted by other agencies” Steve explained. “Steve Rogers at your service.”_

_“Phil Coulson at yours sir. I’m afraid I’m not clear on what you meant.”_

_“Mr. Coulson, how would you like to come and work for S.H.I.E.L.D.?”_

_Phil froze and attempted to rapidly process everything Captain America had just offered him._

_“You want me. To work for you?” Coulson echoed uncertainly, feeling a wave of shock sweep up his spine. “I’d say yes, but I doubt I’m up to the level that your-”_

_“My choice, my time, Mr. Coulson. So if you’re sure about the yes you just gave me, then welcome to the team” Steve replied with a smile, offering Coulson a hand to shake._

_“I’m honored, sir.”_

 

* * *

 

Senator Jack Thompson had seriously contemplated retirement in the 1980s when Steve and Bucky had started recruiting what he dubbed “the replacement commandos”. Dum Dum’s commendation for Gabe Jones’ grandson Antoine Triplett during training exorcises at S.H.I.E.L.D. hadn’t numbed the feeling of impending dread, particularly when Thompson’s granddaughter had taken an interest in him during one of Peggy and Daniel’s annual get-together’s.

“You want me to what? Jack are you sure you haven’t knocked back one too many bourbons with Ted Kennedy again?” Daniel Sousa insisted from the other end of the phone line. “Peggy would kill you if she knew you were trying to set up her favorite niece. Even if it _is_ with Trip.”

“You don’t understand, Sousa, it’s not Kitty I’m worried about, it’s Jones’ grandkid” Thompson answered. “She’s worse than Peggy ever was, not the least because of her ‘abilities’.”

“They’re called mutants, Thompson, and as you, me, and everyone else found out in 1973, they’re just as human as we are” Sousa intoned patiently.

“That’s the problem. She’s too human and ruthless to boot. Jones’ kid won’t know what hit him when she shows up from inside his wall late some night after a bender.”

Thompson received a reply to his concerns in the form of Peggy Carter at the foot of his office door several weeks later.

“Is he a good shot?” she wanted to know, presumably referring to Agent Triplett.

“Middling, but Dugan insists the kid’s reflexes more than make up for his target accuracy levels” Thompson responded, knowing what was coming.

Peggy didn’t disappoint.

“Kitty’s only doing this because she feels she can’t bring home any of the boys from her school for you to meet” she asserted. “Maybe it’s time you showed her you’re more receptive to meeting her friends.”

Peggy paused, raising a very deliberate eyebrow.

“Even if they are _blue_ and _fuzzy._ ”

“You always knew how to cut a man down, Carter. It’s a wonder I didn’t drown in that bottle Dooley always kept locked in his desk during those three years you stayed with us” Thompson retorted.

“What is power without the obstacles that come with it?” Peggy returned with a not quite smile.

Thompson sighed and gestured with his hand.

“Pull up a chair, Carter, I at least owe you a coffee for scaring the daylights out of Gingrich last week.”

“As long as the conversation doesn’t steer toward tailored blue dresses, Jack.”

“I’d rather keep whatever mobility I have left after the last time you cut me off with those heels of yours, Peggy.”

 

* * *

 

Obadiah Stane is a prominent presence in the image of Stark Industries and has on occasion tried to motivate Tony to take his skills further and exceed Howard’s quota for munitions. Something Howard attempted to decry years ago having learned from the consequences of his own actions, but Obadiah still owns enough stock in the company to be heard. Leading Tony to act on his own ambitions and eventually do several press conferences and demonstrations, the most prolific of these turns out to be his last when the convoy transporting him from the demonstration site is attacked with RPG’s and Tony is extracted by an unknown group of insurgents.

It’s a move they’ll regret as Steve and Bucky join Colonel Rhodes search and retrieval effort in Afghanistan, continually frustrating Tony’s best friend with their idea of off-roading and late night unsanctioned missions to “stake out” the local terrorist cells. Mind you their always back long before reveille and the few times Rhodes actually notices Captain America and Sergeant Barnes absence didn’t last long enough before their return for the claim to be made that they’d gone AWOL.

Steve can’t remember for the life of him if he’s already cut down Bin Laden or Alja-what’s his name, because he’s too focused on finding Tony. It isn’t until the President announces that the remains of several prominent terrorists have even been found that he and Bucky realize how much ground they’ve covered.

They don’t find Tony until he’s just about made his escape from his captors in a metal shell of a suit that looks like death itself. Steve’s the first one in and blocks a barrage of bullets from hitting Tony’s accomplice and fellow prisoner, the man they’d later come to know as Dr. Ho Yinsen.

“While I appreciate your efforts, Captain, you can lower the shield” Yinsen insisted. “I am meant to die here today, you, the Sergeant, and Stark are not.”

“Yeah, well there’s a girl back in that village with your surname asking where her father is” Bucky grits out as he joins Steve in covering Yinsen and watching Tony’s back. “Famir.”

Dr. Yinsen’s face is a mask of incredulity, then shock and relief that his youngest child managed to survive the bloodbath he knows the Ten Rings must have incurred upon his family.

“What color are her eyes?” he asked tentatively, still sure that Bucky could have mistaken this girl for another.

“Green” Bucky replies as three more of his shots ring true.

Yinsen closes his eyes and ducks back further behind Steve’s shield.

“Then when this is over, you must take me to her.”

 

* * *

 

Rhodey finds them in Yinsen’s home village of Gulmira.

“Director Fury isn’t going to like this” he says, but with enough of a teasing tone that they know he won’t report them.

“’It’s Peggy we’re worried about” Bucky snorts. “We’ve been above Fury’s clearance level since before he scuffed his first combat boots. It took him two years to realize we’d been using his office as a hideaway from the Stark onslaught.”

“In his defense he spends half the time in DC doing overseas conference calls” Steve pointed out.

“Coulson begged us to stop repainting it off shades to see if he’d notice the difference” Bucky added.

“Oh he noticed” Steve murmured. “Phil’s the one who gets touchy about those things.”

“Don’t see why when it’s just a little acrylic” Bucky muttered. “It’s nothing like how Clint lost my lucky knife to Natalia.”

“Didn’t you train her?” Rhodey countered incredulously.

“She had that wily attitude when she came to me” Bucky replied, absently taking out one of his newer blades and turning it over in his hand, before tightening his grip and propelling into the forehead of a gunman creeping his way up from behind a boulder several meters away. “She learned how to hide her catches far too well from the get-go.”

Bucky declined mentioning that he couldn’t bring himself to liberate the knife from her once he found out from Clint that it was one of the few things that made Natasha feel truly safe, and eventually helped her to break herself of her pre-conditioned sleeping habits, courtesy of Department X, which included being unable to sleep properly without cuffing herself to the bed rail.

The extraction team collects Tony from Gulmira on Rhodey’s directive after administering field medical aid. Steve, Bucky, and Rhodey are alarmed to learn about Tony’s new prosthetic heart shield, which Tony insistently referred to as an arc reactor.

“I could not remove all of the shell fragments from his chest” Yinsen explained after reemerging from a nearby building with his daughter beside him. “I used the prerequisites from Stark’s own research on self-sustainable conduits to create a preventative device with an opposing magnetism radius to keep the shrapnel from shredding his heart.”

Bucky cringed upon the realization that Tony now had a device weighing down his chest, pressing into his lungs, in what that would likely be a lifelong preventative measure to keep him alive, even as the device itself physically strained his heart and lungs.

Steve and Rhodey had similarly worried reactions to this revelation, which Tony waved off as he put a hand around Yinsen’s shoulders.

“Looks like you’re going to get the chance to meet dear old Dad after all, Yinsen.”

“Mr. Stark I really couldn’t-”

“I can’t in good conscience leave you and her here to sit and wait for the next cowl wearing cave dwellers to leap out and finish the fire fight, Yinsen. So I’m buying the two of you a one-way ticket straight to my high security tower, no questions asked” Tony continued.

“It’s better if you just let this one go, Doctor” General Rhodes advised. “Tony…he tends to get really touchy about the safety of the people he actually cares about.”

“Hence why Rhodey has two under-the-bridge safe houses, not one” Tony chimed in. “Pepper gets three.”

Rhodey raised any eyebrow.

“What can I say, catastrophically annoying the old rust bucket wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying without her there to rearrange the fine print to go my way.”

 

* * *

 

Weeks later, while Tony was recovering in the tower and Howard, to the best of his ability, was calling out the board against Obadiah Stane in an effort to overrule Stane’s attempts to supersede Tony’s veto of any future manufacturing of military armament. Steve and Bucky noted that this was the closest Howard had ever come to officially approving of Tony’s position as an engineer of equal measure in the company. Stane was successfully shuffled back into a secondary administrative role, while Howard approved Pepper Potts to act as Tony’s executive proxy during the coming months.

Tony’s shock over his father’s intervention nearly sent him into a minor cardiac arrest, something Steve noted that Howard would probably be amused by if Tony wasn’t still fighting for physical and mental stability during an intensive recovery period.

Steve and Bucky received their own moment of disbelief when Rhodey showed up at Stark Tower with two members of the air core’s pararescue unit.

“Man, is that Captain America?”

“Don’t faint on me Wilson, I need someone here to pay for half the drinks we owe these guys for saving our ‘A out there.”

“You’re tellin’ me. Hey Captain, I know this guy may not look it, but he’s the best wingman I’ve ever had. So I want to thank you right up front for deflecting that RPG rocket and keeping this guy’s wings intact.”

“Tony tested the shield with some of his best a few years back” Steve said sheepishly, “so I knew it could withstand the hit.”

Bucky snorted.

“He would’ve done more than that if Jarvis hadn’t stopped him” he said before offering them a salute. “Sergeant James Barnes. Good to meet ya.”

“Lieutenant Sam Wilson.”

“Corporal Riley Jacobson.”

The accompanying salutes were met and replaced with handshakes, which transitioned into Rhodey giving the two of them a tour of the tower with Steve and Bucky following close behind.

The following night Sam and Riley proved they could hold their liquor, though not near enough to compete with Steve and Bucky’s serum induced immunity. Resulting in their eventually joining Steve and Bucky on an outing with Dum Dum and an aging Morita and Falsworth, something that became a regular occurrence whenever Sam and Riley were on leave back in the States.

Tony, much to the airman’s chagrin, took an interest in their wings and tested their personal ability to operate and rapidly maneuver several winged ex-o skeletons he’d designed. Riley was also drafted into helping Tony with his new armored suit, incurring a resultant, very rare genuine glare from Sam.

“Don’t get your feathers in a ruffle, Wilson. I just need to make sure this thing can hold up under its designated weight limit without letting the thermals effect its propulsion.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better, Stark, after this guy almost got blown out of the mother fucking sky?”

“Which is why we’re doing this in the lab” Tony affirmed.

“Barnes almost killed you when you shot at Captain America with one of those RPG’s, didn’t he?”

“Hiding behind Uncle Steve’s shield for cover may have taken more of my pride that day than I was willing to relinquish” Tony admitted reluctantly, before turning back to observe as Riley hovered at a low altitude through a specifically designed course in what had previously been the basement level of Tony’s parking garage. “I’ve learned to respect soldier crushes or _be_ crushed.”

Sam raised a skeptical eyebrow at him.

“Steve said something, didn’t he?”

“What can I say, I’m his favorite nephew and he wants me to live.”

“Just don’t bug Riley about it, he doesn’t know.”

“Oh don’t worry, in two weeks you’ll be in the presence of Clint and Romanoff, who won’t let you off until you’re spewing your romantically tethered guts out.” Tony replied waving his hand distractedly. “Just let me spring for the nuptials when you and the side-talons finally exchange glittery little love pebbles.”

“That generally happens with penguins, Tony” Pepper corrected lightly as she stepped up beside them.

“Love birds are love birds, Pep. Have you got my schematics?” Tony asked gleefully.

“The ones your father loaned us, that _should_ be handled with the utmost care?” she responded, stopping for what became an unanswered pause before replying “Yes, but on the condition that you momentarily curb your well-meaning but incredibly stifling romantic intervention.”

Tony mumbled noncommittally before nodding and taking the files from her outstretched hand.

Sam was still standing, arms folded, never taking his eyes off Riley, but Tony noted the change in his expression.

“Don’t look so smug, Wilson. The only time she’s ever gone easy on me is when she’s got everything planned out already herself.”

Pepper turned away slightly and pretended to be watching Riley’s flight with interest, though a slip of color on her cheeks gave her away.

“What have I gotten myself into?” Sam muttered, putting a hand to the bridge of his nose.

His disbelief is eventually tempered when he, Riley, and Colonel Rhodes wind up flying a backup mission to rescue Ms. Potts and Agent Coulson’s team when it’s discovered that Obadiah Stane had created his own armored suit on the sly and attempted to utilize its capabilities to force his way through the back annals Tony’s branch of company headquarters.

Tony’s able to take Obadiah down with the help of several retroactive upgrades courtesy of J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony’s personal AI whose design was based upon Edwin Jarvis personality makeup, Mr. Jarvis having recently taken a reluctant retirement with his wife Anna, who’d concurrently been the basis for Howard Stark’s AI, A.N.N.E., along with Peggy Carter. Anne had a women’s voice and a no nonsense attitude when it came to overseeing Howard’s health and well-being, despite his firm insistence on his personal desire to continue personally testing his own prototypes.

Warnings given by the AI’s during the fight also prevented both Tony and Riley from catching damage from several airborne projectiles that emanated from Obadiah’s colossally built armored suit. Riley having purposely maneuvered into the missile’s range to physically steer Sam and the shield agent he’d rescued off the track of a hit meant to take them down. Focusing on Sam had nearly distracted Riley from watching his own six and Anne’s warning came just in time for him to dodge Stane’s next shot.

The scene that night was a testament to late night rapid clean up, ending in Tony buying everyone drinks and letting them stay in the penthouses’ spare rooms, while he had an immediate conference call with his father.

Tony eventually rejoined them, after having Jarvis dial Clint and Natasha to let them know what they were missing while in Budapest, and insisted on mixing drinks for everyone. Most people, including Rhodey, cut out for bed quickly after their fifth or sixth drink. Riley being the only one not to join in that night, returning a few quips in conversation, but otherwise staying unusually silent.

At the end of the night, when Tony had passed out behind the bar, and everyone half deliriously shuffled off to bed, Riley helped steer a stumbling Sam to one of the adjacent guest rooms. Sam fell asleep the moment his head hit a pillow and after pulling the covers over him, Riley paused to leave note held down by an ocean smoothed stone that simply read:

_Penguins aren’t the only ones who know how to say what they mean._

_Stark wasn’t completely off track._

_If you change your mind, then just know that I’ll always be on your right._

_\- Riley_

**Author's Note:**

> Yes this universe does incorporate both the X-Men Cinematic Universe, particularly Days of Futures Past, AND the X-Men Evolution Universe. I've decided to meld these two universes into one here, keeping the characterization of most of the X-Men from movie universe, with the exception of Kitty Pryde, Kurt/Nightcrawler, Pietro/Quicksilver (only the Days of Future's Past version exists here), Wanda/Scarlet Witch (only the DOFP version exists here), Charles Xavier, and Erik Lehnsherr.
> 
> Oh and George H.W. Bush (senior) used to be the Head of the CIA, so he's the one Steve was talking about during his conversation with Coulson.
> 
> Also, I did make Agent Jack Thompson, Kitty Pryde's grandfather, if anyone was wondering. The incidents involving mutants didn't go down as badly as they could have, because of how S.H.I.E.L.D. was formed this time around, and the participation of the Howling Commandos, a unit that's not only very progressive for being integrated, but is used to dealing with strange cases involving the supernatural or otherwise.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading. Let me know if any of you have any questions about the timeline or the storyline logic. ;)


End file.
